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He was ridiculed for thinking like this but almost 90 years ago, there was someone who was actually against the levees

The following quotes are taken from a paper that Viosca presented at a national meeting in Hartford, CT on August 8, 1927,* four months after the Mississippi flood that devastated south Louisiana and inspired John Barry’s well-known book Rising Tide…Thus man, by harnessing our rivers, has created new conditions of existence in the formerly wet areas, this resulting in a decided decline of the aquatic natural resources. Several million acres formerly suitable for fish and other aquatic wild species have been made unfit for such creatures, yet are serving no other useful purpose…(and) they are subject to the ever present menace of disastrous floods……It is chiefly as a result of the building of levees, and not as a result of shooting and trapping, that our aquatic birds and mammals have suffered…Just as our aquatic birds and mammals have suffered by our present and past means of flood prevention, reclamation and drainage projects, so have our fisheries, both marine and freshwater.

Its in the book Rising Tide, but also BTNEP has a calendar for 2014 they just put out and he is mentioned there as well.

I am looking for this other publication that was put out by a bunch of Louisiana naturalists and it talks about Louis Jacques Judice who talks about his adventures down Bayou Lafourche in the late 1700s. He was commissioned by the Spanish governor when La was part of Spain, to explore the "Lafourche des Chetimaches district" and determine if it was suitable for settling.
This is the quote I have from the calendar for Judice when he expolored Bayou Lafourche area:

"The natural levees were small grasslands or prairies one or two arpents wide occupied by turkey, deer, wolves, prairie chicken, bison, cougar, and the Carolina Parakeet. Along the bayou were plentiful feathered game of all varieties including ducks, wood ducks, mergansers, teal, white and grey ibises, and cormorants in great numbers"

I will post the rest when I track it down. Good stuff - bison, cougar, wolves, prairie chickens, all down in Lafrourche

Percy Viosca:
Is Viosca Knoll named for him? This is a block in the
Mexican Gulf due east of Venice Louisiana.
I worked offshore there VK786 for a while.
They called the field Petronius after some Roman poet during the reign of Nero as I recall....

Percy Viosca:
Is Viosca Knoll named for him? This is a block in the
Mexican Gulf due east of Venice Louisiana.
I worked offshore there VK786 for a while.
They called the field Petronius after some Roman poet during the reign of Nero as I recall....